PROJECT FOXY: Awakening the Giant

The giant is me and no other. 

For years, I have done one thing successfully….year in and year out. I have added more and more weight to my frame. Compared to my former self…I am indeed a giant. I know precisely when it started. I know precisely why it started. It is not a complex reason or one that is even justifiable. 

I met and started dating this guy in 2001. His name was John and when I fell in love with him…I fell HARD. We met at an IT Conference. He was one of the panelist and I remember spending most of the time staring at him. When the conference was over, I walked up to him and asked him a question that could have been answered by any other panelist. In fact, he even referred me to someone else. It didn’t matter though…I walked out with a smile having told him where I worked and exchanged email addresses. Those were the good old days of Yahoo Chat. The following day, I got an invitation to add him as a friend. As they say, the rest is history. I learnt later on that he had recently come back home from the UK. After we met, he went back for about a month before returning to Kenya for good. 

A few weeks after we started dating, John took me out for lunch and told me that he was engaged to someone he had met in India. This gal was still finishing off her degree and was coming back in a few months time. Inwardly, I must have cracked a little. I sat there as tears ran down my face.  Like the sly guy he was…John didn’t break up with me. Obviously, he wasn’t about to break off his engagement either. Rather, he asked me to make a choice. To stay or to leave. It was clear to me immediately. I would stay.  For whatever reason, I had lost myself in this man. He was wonderful and everything I wanted. He was even the things that I did not know I wanted. For the next four months or so…I had the time of my life. We spent a lot of time together and many a night were spent in his arms, on the hard floor at his mother’s business premises. We had nowhere else to go. I hardly felt the hard floor nor the cold in the night. Frankly, I have never slept so soundly in my life. Being with him was almost magical. Every time he kissed me, I got lost a little more. When he looked into my eyes, I was tempted to forget my name..I would start stammering and behaving like a little girl. I never thought it was possible to fall so deeply in love with someone. It was ridiculous. 

One day, she came back. The minute he told me, I knew what I had to do so. I cut off all contact. I walked away with my head hung low. All I remember about that period of time is that my chest hurt a lot. It was as if the heartbreak was literal. My heart ached…but my chest hurt even more. Eventually, I began to feel better physically but emotionally...the pain was still so real. I missed him so much!  One month later, John came looking for me. He looked better than ever and after a long speech, he basically told me that if nothing else, we should be friends. And so it was. During this period of time, I developed a close relationship with food. I developed such a close dependency that has stuck with me all this time.  I am finally ready to end it. Just as I am finally ready to end my love for John. He eventually married his gal and I was there for him even helping them plan the wedding as one of the committee members. Nobody knew our little secret other than his best friend. It was the hardest thing for me to do. I still loved him as much as I did before we broke it off but some how I survived the meetings and I survived the wedding with a big fake smile spluttered across my face. It has been 12 years now and I have added 41kgs to be precise within this period. I have been in love again after that but I have never fallen out of love with John nor have I fallen out of love with food.  

Don’t get me wrong, it is not John’s fault. It is entirely my fault. I own it all. The folds and folds around my stomach especially. I completely and absolutely own them. Today is significant for me. 11/11/2013. It finally hit me that if I cannot push myself to lose weight, then am unlikely to accomplish this big goal that I have in mind. I want to reach this goal so bad that it is the very focus of my thoughts all day. I cannot fail at it. I refuse to fail. For me to accomplish this goal, I have to push myself way beyond my limits. Yet, here I am carrying around this weight like it is impossible to beat. Am scared of it…I feel like it owns me…like it is my destiny to carry for the rest of my life. 

Today, on my own volition, I walked out of my house and headed to the field within our compound. It was precisely 1900 hours. Nobody was in sight and I prayed that it would stay that way. I hoped none of my neighbours would see me. I hoped the security guards would not be interested in finding out who the short, plump figure running around in the darkness was. Thankfully the surrounding trees acted as my camouflage. I don’t know the exact size of the field but it is of fair size. What I did out there was not important (but just to be precise I ran around the field for 30 minutes…just about 10 laps without fainting :-) or having a heart attack. I thank God!). What is important is the fact that I was out there. I have never been a fun of exercise. Of course it shows…everywhere all over me. Any time I have exercised, it has been because someone finally pushed me enough to do it. It never lasted. I have NEVER willfully exercised. At least not in the past 12 years. In high school, I was part of the hockey team and was a scorer. Position 6 to be precise. I loved hockey like madness. Nobody had to push me to get out there. Once, after getting hit by the hockey ball at full speed right under my left eye, I was left with a nasty black eye and half swollen face.  Yet…I was out there in the field ready for practice. Hockey practice and the subsequent games were all the exercise I needed. I have never bothered to exercise after that. 

As for John, you may wonder what happened to him. He is turning 40 next year. After five years of marriage and 1 child, his wife left him. I was there for him for a while before he disappeared for some time. He keeps reappearing and disappearing like a really bad magic trick. Each time, he looks worse than before. Each time, he has a story or the other to tell about some girl he met or impregnated or who is trying to screw up his life. Each time he comes back, he depreciates in value in my eyes yet somewhere within me, I hope he has come back for me. He still looks even hotter than he did back then (I never thought it was possible) but when I look into his eyes, I no longer see the man I fell in love with. I see dark, long shadows but somewhere in there, I also see traces of a man trying to find himself again. I hope he finally does but in the meantime I too hope to find the girl that I lost 12 years ago. I kinda liked her. I don’t want to be slim and slinky. All I want is to get my foxy back. I want to feel sexy again…I want to look sexy again…I want to be able to look at the mirror and not cringe. I want to see a camera and not want to take off in the opposite direction. Actually, maybe I should get a cameraman to chase me around the field till I lose the 41kgs! Above all, I want to be healthy. Not just for myself but also for my son Levi. I want my foxy back and today thus marks the beginning of Project Foxy.